NES-11 PAKISTAN Nicholas Schmidle is a Phillips Talbot Fellow of the Institute studying identity and politics in Pakistan.

ICWA Dispatches from letters By Nicholas Schmidle February 8, 2007 Since 1925 the Institute of THE 2007 ELECTION SEASON in Bangladesh has featured an unexpected ­Current World Affairs (the Crane- — and unlikely — pair of stars: the army and Nobel Peace Prize-winner Moham- Rogers Foundation) has provided mad Yunus. Yunus, the microcredit guru and acclaimed “banker to the poor,” re- long-term fellowships to enable cently announced that he was entering the political fray by promising to “build the outstanding young professionals Bangladesh as we dreamt.” And the army, which took control of the country 11 days to live outside the United States before the parliamentary elections scheduled for January 22, has embarked on a merciless anti-corruption campaign. It has arrested thousands of allegedly crooked and write about international politicians and sent the rest into hiding. To arrange an interview in these areas and issues. An exempt days can be trying; dodging arrest, many politicians have changed phone numbers operating foundation endowed and no longer sleep at home. The only politico freely out and about is Yunus. by the late Charles R. Crane, the Institute is also supported by Kamal Hossain, like millions of others around the country, is ecstatic. A well- contributions from like-minded dressed man in his early 70s with a deep, fleshy voice, Hossain sounded triumphant individuals and foundations. and giddy during our recent meeting. “People are shocked, because suddenly, the law has returned to Bangladesh,” he said. He thinks that if Yunus can leverage his huge public stature and stay committed to clean, principled politics, he could “fuel a real democratic movement.” Thirty-five years ago, Hossain played a critical role TRUSTEES in the movement to form Bangladesh, acting first as legal advisor to “father of the Bryn Barnard nation” Sheik Mujibur Rahman and later writing the 1972 Constitution. But after Joseph Battat thirty years, he found his nation’s prospects growing grim. Yunus’ candidacy, Hus- Carole Beaulieu sein said, is proof that, “God exists for Bangladesh.” Mary Lynne Bird Steven Butler But is serious change truly underfoot? And can the army take credit? Peter Geithner Gary Hartshorn Bangladesh is a Muslim-majority country of roughly 145 million people, whose Pramila Jayapal Cheng Li Dasa Obereigner David Z. Robinson Carol Rose John Spencer Edmund Sutton

HONORARY TRUSTEES David Elliot David Hapgood Pat M. Holt Edwin S. Munger Richard H. Nolte Albert Ravenholt Phillips Talbot

Institute of Current World Affairs The Crane-Rogers Foundation The Karwan Bazar slum Four West Wheelock Street Hanover, New Hampshire 03755 U.S.A. This article was published on Slate, a daily magazine on the web, April 17, 2007. http://www.slate.com/id/2164200/entry/0/ army has a history of meddling in politics. In 1975, a hand- reckless adventurism, i.e. staging a coup. But growing ful of army officers assassinated Mujib and his family. That tensions and violence throughout the country in late 2006 touched off a rapid series of coups and counter-coups. pushed their patience to the limit. General Ziaur Rahman, who ruled from 1975 through 1981, survived 22 coup attempts before being finally assas- The trouble started in October 2006, when the out- sinated. Five separate military regimes ruled from the time going BNP government handed power to a caretaker of Mujib’s murder until December 1990, when massive administration full of BNP sympathizers. In protest, the street demonstrations forced General Ershad to step down AL orchestrated demonstrations, strikes and blockades, and hand power to a civilian government. during which 40 people died and hundreds were injured. As the elections neared, the frequency and intensity of the During three elections since 1991 the army has re- street battles intensified. On January 3, the AL announced mained in its barracks. Many considered Bangladesh that it was boycotting the polls. This prompted the Inter- a model for other burgeoning Muslim democracies to national Republican Institute and the National Demo- emulate. The United States Institute of Peace published a cratic Institute, two election monitoring organizations, to report in May 2005 that compared Bangladesh to Turkey cancel their programs on the basis that polls without one and added that it “exemplifies the coexistence of of the two major parties could never be considered free and democracy.” But regular elections and a functioning or fair. As street violence increased, the UN hinted to the democracy are not the same. During this period of civil- army that its inability to keep peace in Bangladesh was ian rule, the heads of the two main political parties, Sheik threatening its peacekeeping mandate overseas. Hasina of the Awami League (AL) and Khaleda Zia of the Bangladeshi Nationalist Party (BNP), fought out one of I arrived on January 13th, two days after President the world’s nastiest personal rivalries. They competed Iajuddin Ahmed declared the State of Emergency. No one with one another in everything, even in the amount of really knew what to think. Had the army staged a coup? money they could plunder from the state. Transparency Was martial law coming next? On my first night in Dhaka, International, the corruption watchdog, ranked Bangla- I met a young couple at an upscale café near the center of desh as the most corrupt nation in the world for five out town. They hadn’t traveled out of their house for the past of the last six years. Meanwhile, the World Bank estimates couple weeks, guarding against the off-chance that they that the average person makes $470 a year. would be caught someplace where protesters might be chucking bricks at the police. They were thrilled about the Throughout the 1990s and the first seven years of this State of Emergency. The roads were safe and they could get decade, the army sat back and watched. It had secured their cappuccinos again. Already, rumors were circulating a sweet peacekeeping mandate with the United Nations about Yunus taking on a central political role, perhaps as and didn’t want to see that jeopardized as a result of any president or chief advisor to the caretaker government. When I asked the cappuccino couple what they thought, the girl nodded her head approvingly and said, “This country could use some new people.” By the time I left a month later, Yunus had officially announced the formation of his party, Nagorik Shakti, or Citizen’s Power. He talked about saving the country and rescuing the poor. I knew that the café crowd and the elite loved him, but what about the poor?

MOHAMMAD ABDUL IS A SEVENTY-SEVEN-YEAR- old slum dweller with a long, white beard, stained at the tips like the mustache of a two-pack- a-day-smoker. On the day we met, he wore a green, crocheted prayer cap and button on his left breast pocket to commemorate his service as a freedom fighter in the 1971 war. He stood in front of his home

 NES-11 — a tin shack suspended by a few knobby- kneed bamboo poles above stagnant water, rotting celery stalks and shimmering pieces of plastic chip bags — and explained how he was about to be evicted.

As part of the its anti-corruption and lawlessness campaign, the army was work- ing in conjunction with police units and detachments of the elite, anti-crime force known as Rapid Action Battalion, or RAB, to demolish numerous settlements deemed illegal for encroaching on government prop- erty. Three days before my visit, RAB was in the Karwan Bazar slum to give Abdul a three-day notice to leave. “I spilled blood for this country because I believed that the poor would live freely, but we are still being ha- rassed,” he told me while exposing a mouth- ful of teeth the size of dominoes, the result of an aggressively receding gum line.

I expected him to continue berating the joint forces for their plans to demolish “I spilled blood for this country because I believed that the poor would his home. But in fact, he was sanguine. He live freely, but we are still being harassed,” said Mohammad Abdul. granted that he had no place to go and would probably wind up “roaming the streets,” but he didn’t or stomp to death at least 20 locals every year.) blame the army. They are doing the right thing, he said. “These crooks must be arrested.” Nurul is a Rohingya, an outcast community of from the Rakhine State in western Myanmar It wasn’t until I brought up Yunus that he became (formerly Burma). The military government in Myanmar animated. When I asked Abdul if he could consider considers Rohingyas to be migrants from Bangladesh, supporting Yunus in the next election, he sucked on his having moved to Myanmar only in the last few centuries, domino-sized teeth and pretended to swat at invisible and refuses them citizenship rights. “They are treated like flies. Microcredit is one thing, he explained, but running dogs,” an official from the United Nations High Commis- for prime minister is quite another. “Yunus was fine before sioner for Refugees (UNHCR) told me. Their national ID winning the Peace Prize,” Abdul said. He stuck to what he cards, under “nationality and religion,” read “Bengali knew best. “But he doesn’t know what he is talking about Muslims.” The junta debases Rohingyan religious and when it comes to politics. He is just talking.” cultural traditions at every opportunity. Most mosques stand in disrepair. Those in passing condition are turned into police and fire stations. Rohingyas wanting to marry JANUARY 29 require official permission and pay a whopping tax. Should they evade payment and the authorities find out, the groom is sent off to a labor camp for several years until RECENTLY, NURUL HAQ HASN’T BEEN he works off his debt. SLEEPING AT HOME. In the middle of night, he slips away from his wife, tiptoes out of the house, and lies for In 1992, 250,000 Rohingya refugees crossed into Ban- hours along the muddy bank of the Naf River. Every gladesh after rumors circulated that the Myanmar army night for the past week, Bangladeshi police and army was torching Rohingya villages. UNHCR immediately personnel have stormed his refugee camp in search of established 22 camps from Cox’s Bazar, a resort city that criminals — or any able-bodied male with the capacity to boasts the longest natural beach — at 75 miles — in the act as one — as part of a nationwide anti-crime and anti- world, to Teknaf, the southernmost city on the mainland corruption campaign. Nurul, a gaunt man in his early of Bangladesh and a renowned hub of smuggling activ- 20s with a trimmed mustache and a floppy hairstyle, ity. Since then, most of the refugees have gone back and claims that dozens have already disappeared. To avoid only two official UNHCR camps remain, housing 26,000 arrest, most of the men hide in the jungle. When I asked people. But there is also an unofficial camp just north of Nurul why he opts for the riverbank, which seemed to Teknaf with some 10,000 refugees — commonly referred provide less cover, he answered frankly, “I am terrified to as the “makeshift camp.” Options for work are scant; of the elephants.” (Wild elephants roaming the dense Nurul pulls a rickshaw a few days a week and fills the hills bordering Bangladesh and Myanmar impale, maul rest of his time as a fisherman. Neither pays more than INSTITUTE OF CURRENT WORLD AFFAIRS  a dollar a day. Myanmar’s government asserts that rebel to 40 percent of kids to have respiratory infections.) He fighters belonging to the Rohingya Solidarity Movement twiddled and toyed with his penis the entire time. (RSO) operate and recruit there. Others allege that inter- national jihadi outfits poach from the ranks of desperate The Rohingya camps are filled with disease. More refugees. debatable is whether criminals infest the camps. In one of the UNHCR camps, a Bangladeshi security officer I recently rented a microbus and went to Teknaf to see explained that almost every male, at a minimum, was the makeshift camp. The road from Cox’s Bazar to Teknaf involved in muggings and thievery. I couldn’t gauge the passed through a religiously conservative area. Madrassas, veracity of such claims. On the one hand, no one would or Islamic seminaries, appeared every few miles on either know better than the man in charge of security for the side of the road. The few women out wore black camp; on the other, Bangladeshi officials exaggerate the that cloaked their faces; from a distance, it was difficult Rohingyas criminal activities in order to expedite their to tell which direction they were walking. Lush hills, like repatriation to Myanmar. The government accuses them giant, green gumdrops, formed the landscape to the west. of being terrorists. The Daily Star reported in August 2006 The unimaginably wide Naf River, the natural barrier that, “Jama’atul Mujahideen Bangladesh (JMB)” — the between Myanmar and Bangladesh, formed the other. I group responsible for detonating 500 bombs simultane- was marveling at the natural beauty when we arrived at ously throughout the country in August 2005 — “emerged the camp. with its militant activities by sending trained Muslim Rohingya rebels to Afghanistan and Kashmir war fronts At first glance, the makeshift camp looked like a in the 1980s.” When I asked Nurul whether he had wit- burlap city; hut after hut made of brown, floppy material. nessed recruitment in the camp, he at first denied hear- But it wasn’t burlap or canvas, rather tarps and patches of ing about any such things. Then he spoke up: “Last year, plastic garbage bags caked with dust. Along the roadside, fifteen people suddenly disappeared and went off to get sections of homemade, bamboo lattice pretended to act as military training in the hills. When they came back, we a fence. Yet the refugees spilled across the street. Naked asked them where they had gone. They said, ‘We went children with drippy noses and medicine-ball bellies for the greater benefit of the Rohingya people.’” Nurul chased each other back and forth through traffic. In the said he didn’t know for sure the name of the group that hut he shared with his teenage wife and another couple, offered the training, but assumed it was RSO. The fresh Nurul sent someone to bring tea while his 2-year-old son recruits told Nurul that they were “preparing to fight for stood by his side. The boy was naked and snot dripped the liberation of Myanmar.” onto his lower lip. (Médecins Sans Frontières — Holland, which runs a clinic across the street, estimates between 30 Until then, the Rohingyas will keep squatting in

A crying boy leans on his mother while she separates rice in front of their hut in Teknaf  NES-11 Teknaf camp their squalid camps, thankful for every day they aren’t token in his hand that he had paid a Bangladeshi border arrested, evicted, or forcibly repatriated. The UNHCR guard a few hundred Taka (around $5) for. (The Myan- camps aren’t accepting new refugees and the Rohingyas mar border guards make no effort to keep the Rohingyas believe that the Bangladesh government is looking for from leaving.) When Nurul returned to the border area any excuse to deport them. For a long time, they’ve had after his token expired, a fellow Rohingya warned him no place to call home. Now, with a State of Emergency declared in Ban- gladesh and the army being given more leeway to chase criminals and “cleanse society of unwanted ele- ments,” the Rohingyas fear a more aggressive campaign against them may be in the offing.

If people like Nurul returned to Myanmar, the military would kill them before long. The Myanmar army keeps track of the Rohingyas in Rakhine State by conducting unannounced head-counting ses- sions. Those who are absent are considered rebels. According to Nurul, one of the army’s preferred methods for punishing traitors is to bind them to a pole under a low, tin roof in the sun, and then leave them to bake to death. Nurul came to Bangladesh for the first time nearly 10 years ago, holding a 20-day work Goodbye from Teknaf INSTITUTE OF CURRENT WORLD AFFAIRS  Worshippers during juma, or Friday, prayers. that roll call had been done. He was listed as missing. He dresses — the Bangladeshis in their traditional, plaid immediately turned around and has been in Bangladesh man-skirts, the Arabs in ankle-length tunics, and the ever since. I put a question to him and the other people Pakistanis in slightly shorter tunics, paired with the sort who had joined us in the hut: Could you ever return to of baggy trousers that would make MC Hammer envi- Myanmar under the current government? ous. I’ve worn each outfit and can confidently say that no one in the mass of three million people was wearing An old man with a goatee who recently fled to Ban- underwear. Men strolled hand-in-hand while others sat gladesh spoke up. He said he was cheering for leaders like drinking tea, sometimes caressing one another’s head, Aung San Suu Kyi, the Nobel Laureate who the military arm, or earlobe. Still, this is Asia, where such behavior is junta has kept under house arrest since 1989, and desper- perfectly acceptable for heterosexual men. ately wanted to see democracy in his home country. Only then could he consider returning. But being a Rohingya The brotherly spirit arose when three million men has made him skeptical of all governments. “It doesn’t thronged to a quarter-square-mile campsite the first week- matter who is in power,” he said, “If I see cops in the road, end of February in Bangladesh. The event included three I have to run and hide in the forest.” days of prayers, lectures, and ruminations on how to be a good — and peaceful — Muslim, and took place about an Late in the afternoon, I said goodbye to Nurul. His hour north of Dhaka, the capital. I showed up on Friday, son gave me a high-five with his penis-twiddling hand. the first day, at around noon. The call forjuma prayers, the Just outside the hut, another toddler sent an arching biggest congregational prayer of the week (like Church on stream of urine into a pool of stagnant water where, on the Sunday morning) had just sounded — “Allahu Akbar!” other side, a woman was washing her hair. Teenage girls — and worshippers promptly unrolled prayer rugs in carried bundles of sticks on their heads and the glow of the middle of the street. When one worshipper gestured the setting sun filled the alleys of the camp. In a few hours, like he was going to place his rug on the hood of our car, it would be dark and the army would come looking for I advised our driver to park, marooning us in the middle criminals. If he’s lucky, Nurul would tiptoe, undetected, of the road. I opened the passenger-side door enough out of his house again to go sleep in the muck along the to squeeze out before the faithful closed in around us. side of the Naf River. Latecomers searched frantically for a space to pray, while rugless attendees swarmed around a man selling straw mats. When he sold out, the truly rugless tore black plastic FEBRUARY 2 garbage bags into pieces and laid them on the concrete.

The ijtema, or gathering, was hosted by Tablighi THE BISHWA IJTEMA IS NO PLACE for ho- Jama’at, a massive organization of Muslim missionaries mophobes. Of the three-million Muslims who attended that espouses a strict, yet non-political, interpretation of the gathering in early February, about 10 were women. Islam. Tablighis, as the group’s followers are known, shun The rest walked the grounds donned in a variety of man- bristle toothbrushes in order clean their teeth with miswak,  NES-11 an aromatic stick used by the Prophet Muhammad. They elders had to say. And all in all, their message is quite also drink every glass of water in three sips, the same way tame. Here’s a sampling: the world’s problems result from the Prophet did. They are fundamentalists in every sense a lack of religion, not an excess; ’s power transcends of the word. But they are mostly harmless. “This thing the physical and conceptual limits of this world; and “when is really like an emotional sedative,” said Abdul Badi, a good action pleases you and a bad action displeases you, a Caucasian man with a wiry beard and a thick street then you are a true believer.” Pretty simple. Yet contrary to accent marked by slow, measured enunciations. Badi is what Eisa said, what sets Tablighi Jama’at apart is not so an Islamic contemporary artist and former imam of the much its message, but its method. Tablighis are missionar- MCI-Cedar Junction Supermax prison in Walpole, Mas- ies who see converting a non-Muslim to Islam as a ticket to sachusetts. He made the pilgrimage from his hometown Paradise. Their eyes glowed at the sight of a blonde-haired, of Boston. “This is truly a peace movement within Islam,” blue-eyed American wandering around alone. he said, stressing the second syllable of Is-LAM. Badi and other dedicated tablighis commit at least 40 days a year Most of the 160-acre campground consisted of thou- to traveling and preaching Islam. Christiane Amanpour sands of bamboo shafts stuck into the ground, each one described Tablighi Jama’at as “secretive” and hinted at its holding up part of a long piece of canvas, draped like links to terrorist groups, in a recently broadcast CNN spe- Gulliver-sized bands of ribbon overhead. A few tin-sided cial, “The War Within.” “People are scared,” she added, barns posted signs welcoming foreigners. referring to the group’s growing influence. The first to invite me into their quarters was a group Amanpour missed the mark. Tablighi Jama’at doesn’t of tall men with bulgy turbans from North Waziristan, one have a website or a publishing house (like several earnest of the tribal areas in Pakistan where the Taliban have tak- militant outfits do), and they didn’t want to meet with en over. We drank two rounds of milky tea and discussed, Amanpour. Does that make them secretive? Not when in Urdu, the Taliban and the changes they’ve brought to anyone can walk in and listen to their sermons, including North Waziristan. “The law and order is much better,” one me. Do terrorists attend? With three million people there, said. “But it’s very dangerous for someone like you.” After it’s hard to rule it out. “There is so much ignorance about a few minutes, the leader was fetched. This must be King Islam,” said “Brother” Eisa (EE-SA, which means “Jesus” Missionary, I thought, the moment he arrived. As he circled in ), an African-American and another Boston na- his quarry, he cracked his knuckles and rolled his neck like tive who Badi introduced me to. Eisa explained that he a boxer in warm-up before he sat and faced me. He had no came for the message of peace, whatever reasons a few sooner begun imploring me to “come to Allah,” when an others might have. “We are only accountable for the mes- exterminator entered the barn, wielding what looked like sage of our elders.” a military-grade leaf-blower. The bug man sprayed a lethal poison, only for mosquitoes he assured, that shrouded I went to the ijtema in part to find out just what the our circle in a cloud of toxic fumes. Taking advantage of the smokescreen, I skirted away.

After stumbling out of the Pakistani tent, cough- ing and holding my shirt over my mouth, a teenage Bangladeshi boy stopped me and flashed a creepy smile. He tenderly rubbed my chin and repeated, in a breathy voice, “Oh, oh, Al- lah.” After this, I resolved to find the American tent, where I might have fewer problems with cultural nuances.

There I met Abdul Badi, the artist from Bos- ton. Badi, who converted to Islam “back in the ‘60s,” traveled with his teen- age son. Both father and son wore full beards and The rug-seller enjoys the business opportunity of a lifetime. shaved their upper lips INSTITUTE OF CURRENT WORLD AFFAIRS  in the tradition of the Prophet Muhammad. They acted the way. “I think you need a full-on Arabian experience,” and sounded, well, American. Undoubtedly, they had Badi added, alluding to Mecca, where only Muslims are pitched the nicest tent on the premises. “Yup,” Badi said allowed. while slowly nodding and admiring the blue-and-white, eight-man model. “We brought tha’ Coleman,” decisively I saw what he was getting at. And with one last nervous accenting the first syllable of KOHL-man to emphasize smile, I bid him farewell and stepped out into the night. that it was a cool thing. As we talked, a bottle of perfume was passed around, which the tablighis dabbed on their neck and wrists. Sensing my apprehension, Badi sug- FEBRUARY 5 gested: “Smell it first. It isn’t for everyone.” Grateful for Jabi’s intercession, I passed the bottle to my left. THE PEOPLE OF GOSAIPUR, a village in north- Later, I asked Badi what compelled his conversion western Bangladesh just outside the city of Dinajpur, to Islam and decision to join Tablighi Jama’at. During regard Khokan as their finest hunter. Yet in his turquoise the 1960s, he said with a cocksure grin, “I was a faithful loongi, a traditional Bangladeshi man-skirt, and navy blue worshipper of earthly beauty. But I reached a plateau of t-shirt with a screen-printed portrait of a female Bengali consciousness.” He searched for some spiritual calling. film star, he didn’t strike me as a fearsome figure. But Eventually he found it in a stethoscope. “People say if the skills needed hunting for turtles and kuchia, a spe- you listen to your heartbeat, it makes the sound, ‘LOVE, cies of eel that lives in the swamp, don’t require bravado dove,’ ‘LOVE, dove.’ One day, I took a stethoscope and or great strength. “You need to be quick,” Khokan said placed it on my heart. You know what it said? ‘AL-lah, while describing his technique for catching kuchia with AL-lah.’ You don’t need to formally convert if you can his hands. “You watch for the fin print in the mud, and hear the sound of your own heart.” then you pounce.” And the turtles? He shrugged, feigned nonchalance, and added, “I just chase them down and When the evening’s last sermon ended at around stick a spear through their shell.” 10 p.m., I joined Badi, Eisa, and another African-Ameri- can, a real-life boxing coach from New York City, for Khokan belongs to a caste of Hindus known as dinner. We sat on the ground and plunged our hands “Mushaheris,” a Sanskrit word meaning mice-eaters. The into mounds of rice, meat and salad. The Coach asked Mushaheris are Dalits, the lowest of the low according to if I was a new convert. When I replied that I was just the Hindu caste system. They were known as Untouch- a journalist, he pushed out his lips, as if he were try- ables before the Indian subcontinent became P.C. Some ing to hold a pencil in place with his upper lip. “But say that if so much as the shadow of a Dalit touches a I can tell your heart is getting softa’ and softa’,” he person from an upper caste, the aristocrat should bathe said in a gravelly voice while holding out his upturned palm and opening and closing it as if he were kneading dough. Meanwhile, Eisa lectured on how I couldn’t fully understand Islam without becoming a Muslim. When he noticed me trying to break the conversation by looking around, he snapped: “Listen! I am not talking to hear myself. If you are going to quote me in your article, you better be listen- ing to everything that I say.” I smiled nervously, somewhat embarrassed, and grabbed another fistful of rice.

The rest of dinner continued with various American Muslims working their own missionary angle. Between Coach kneading, Eisa demanding my attention, and the spicy food, my face broke out in a heavy sweat. Just in the nick of time, my friend called to say that he was heading back to Dhaka for the night. I had an excuse and I stood up to leave. Abdul Badi got up to walk me to the gate. “This must be an overwhelm- ing experience for you,” he said along Khokan with BBQ kuchia  NES-11 Gosaipur’s temple to Shiva thoroughly to cleanse any impurities. Dalits, numbering a day’s worth of meetings to attend.” Picturing an after- about one million in Bangladesh (and well over 100 mil- noon of the munchies with the eel heads was not the most lion in Hindu-majority India), are socially immobile; po- glamorous invitation. tential employers shy away from hiring someone labeled an Untouchable by their co-religionists. Most are left toil- Upon saying farewell to Khokan and leaving Gosaipur, ing as a brick-breaker. Yet the wage from breaking bricks I learned that Muslims inhabited the neighboring village. is meager — around 70 cents a day — and not enough to Bangladesh is a Muslim-majority country of approximately buy meat. To compensate for protein deficiencies, Dalits 140 million people, but around 10 to 12 percent of the popu- hunt and eat anything they can find. Mice are the most lation is Hindu. Bengalis boast that their vibrant, liberal common, thus their name, “mice-eaters.” But mice season culture is a product of Hindus and Muslims living side- recently ended, Khokan said. Kuchia were abundant. He by-side for centuries. Rabindranath Tagore, a Bengali poet, ran off to retrieve the spoils of yesterday’s hunt: two bar- artist and novelist who won the Nobel Prize for Literature bequed eel heads, skewered on a knobby twig. in 1913 and is hailed as Bangladesh’s Shakespeare, was a Hindu. He later wrote both the Indian and the Bangladeshi After showing me his tools for breaking bricks and national anthems. spearing turtles, Khokan offered a tour of the village. A distinct smell of urine wafted through the air. In one Still, there are others who think that the rise of Islamist corner, the village pig rolled in dirt while a cow on a groups in Bangladesh poses a threat to the Hindu minori- short leash circled around a pole. Both animals, Khokan ty, especially the outcast Mushaheris. “Jamaat-i-Islami has explained, are investments for a rainy day; a Christian taken advantage of their weaknesses,” said Shah Mobin village will buy the pig for about $100 next Christmas, Jinnah, the Director of the Community Development As- and the cow could fetch several hundred dollars. sociation, an NGO based in Dinajpur. Mobin believes that the Islamists are using the Mushaheris’ illiteracy and des- Gosaipur’s main attraction is a soccer-goal-sized titute poverty to encourage conversions. Can you blame temple dedicated to Shiva, the Hindu God of Creation and them? I asked Mobin. Wouldn’t you consider converting Destruction. Apparently, Shiva liked to get stoned, and in to another religion if the one you belonged to classified order to fully show his veneration, Khokan smoked a lot you as Untouchable? It’s been done before. On August 14, of pot. He pulled a hash-packed chillum from his pocket 1956, B.R. Ambedkar, a primary author of India’s constitu- and suggested we light up. I declined as diplomatically tion and a Dalit by birth, converted himself — and 380,000 as possible, not wanting him to think my refusal reflected other Untouchables — to Buddhism. some bias against sharing a pipe with an Untouchable. “It’s only nine in the morning,” I said. “And I still have After my meeting with Mobin, I headed to another INSTITUTE OF CURRENT WORLD AFFAIRS  Mushaheri village about 30 miles outside of Dinajpur. through the year? I asked. “We can’t,” he said. So previ- The company that normally runs buses between the main ously during the off-seasons, he hunted and ate mice. But road and the village had, for unknown reasons, scrapped lately, Donasher hasn’t needed to go out hunting. About their service for the day, so we rented a “van.” I’m unsure two years ago, village life improved dramatically when how a bicycle pulling a flatbed with two wheels and a everyone converted — to Christianity. lantern dangling underneath was ever dubbed a van, but a friend and I loaded onto the back of it, held the sides Donasher recalled how two teams of missionaries, so as not to slide off, and went bumping along. After a one from the Bangladesh Lutheran Church and another chilly, 45 minute bike ride on a two-lane road that me- from Thali Ta Khumi Church, entered Subarna Khuli andered through rice patties, we arrived in the second and told the village elders: “We will look after you.” village, Subarna Khuli, or “golden field,” at dusk. Three They immediately built a church. They followed that kids played catch with a ball of tape. Across the village, with a school, where the children received one meal a one family performed mundan, a Hindu ritual in which day. “They have given us winter clothes, and in workless the male child’s first haircut involves shaving the boy’s times, they have given us money,” Donasher said. Before head. Fellow villagers gathered to celebrate and the fam- long, responding to the churches’ persistent requests, ily distributed handfuls of rice wrapped in banana leaves. government engineers installed a tube well to pump safe The village had toilets and a schoolhouse. A few people drinking water. “They have helped us both spiritually even had jobs. and economically,” he said.

A short and thin man named Donasher, shivering I thought back on what Shah Mobin Jinnah had told and wrapping a blanket snugly around his chest, intro- me earlier in the day. And he was right: the Mushaheris duced himself as a rice farmer. He had just finished a are a vulnerable lot. Their own religion doesn’t seem to day’s work, standing knee-deep in grimy water planting want them, so why should they feel compelled to stay rice. A frequent and violent cough sounded like someone a Hindu forever? More than that, however, the story of was beating him on the back with a two-by-four. Soon Subarna Khuli illustrates how religious conversions take enough, Donasher said, the rice season would end and place. There are plenty of stories with domineering mis- he’d have no work. How do you make your earnings last sionaries using force or manipulative tactics to convert. But often, it is just a matter of satis- fying people’s basic needs. Whether it is Christian, Muslim or Buddhist missionaries, whichever group can improve the lives of people like Donasher will ultimately win their allegiance.

Nevertheless, neither church has delivered electricity to Subarna Khuli yet. An hour after we arrived, the sky fell pitch black and Donasher ran off to get a bottle of molasses moonshine. Four of us sat on the floor of his single-room home and passed around the bottle, using the light off the LCD of my cell phone to find one another’s hand. I took one gulp that immediately sent a burn- ing sensation down to my toes. After another swig, we boarded the van, and holding tight, meandered back Gosaipur through the rice patties. o

10 NES-11 INSTITUTE OF CURRENT WORLD AFFAIRS 11 Institute Fellows are chosen INSTITUTE OF CURRENT WORLD AFFAIRS on the basis of character, Current Fellows previous experience and promise. They are young Richard D. Connerney • INDIA • January 2005 - 2007 professionals funded to spend a minimum of two A Phillips Talbot Fellow, Rick is studying and writing about the intertwining of religion, years carrying out self-de- culture, and politics in India. Rick is a former lecturer in philosophy and Asian religions at signed programs of study Rutgers University and Iona College. He holds a bachelor’s degree from Wheaton College and writing outside the and a master’s degree from the University of Hawaii, both in religion. United States. The Fel- Kay Dilday • FRANCE/MOROCCO • October 2005 - 2007 lows are required to report their findings and experi- Kay is studying the relationships of the French and North African immigrants in France ences from the field once a and in . A former editor for The New York Times Op-Ed page, Kay holds month. They can write on a master’s degree in comparative international politics and theory from the Graduate any subject, as formally or Center of the City University of New York, a bachelor’s degree in English literature from informally as they wish. Tufts University, and has done graduate work at the Universiteit van Amsterdam in the The result is a unique form Netherlands and the Cours de Civilisation de la Sorbonne. of reporting, analysis and periodic assessment of inter- Suzy Hansen • TURKEY • April 2007 - 2009 national events and issues. A John O. Crane Memorial Fellow, Suzy will be writing about politics and religion in Turkey. A former editor at the New York Observer, her work has also appeared in Salon, the New York Times Book Review, the Nation, and other publications. She graduated ICWA Letters (ISSN 1083-4257) from the University of Pennsylvania in 1999. are published by the Institute of Current World Affairs Inc., a Nicholas Schmidle • PAKISTAN • February 2006 - 2008 501(c)(3) exempt operating foun- dation incorporated in New York Nick is a freelance writer interested in the intersection of culture, religion, and politics State with offices located at 4 in Asia. He’s in Pakistan as an ICWA fellow, examining issues of ethnic, sectarian, and West Wheelock Street, Hanover, national identity. Previously, he reported from Central Asia and Iran. His work has been NH 03755. The letters are provid- published in the Washington Post, the Weekly Standard, Foreign Policy, the Christian Sci- ed free of charge to members of ence Monitor, and elsewhere. He holds a master’s degree in International Affairs from ICWA and are available to librar- American University. ies and professional researchers by subscription. Raphael Soifer • BRAZIL • April 2007-2009 Phone: (603) 643-5548 An actor, director, playwright, musician, and theatre educator, Raphi Soifer is a Donors’ E-mail: [email protected] Fellow studying, as a participant and observer, the relationship between the arts and Fax: (603) 643-9599 soacial change in communities throughout Brazil. He has worked as a performer and Web site: www.icwa.org director in the United States and Brazil, and has taught performance to prisoners and underprivileged youth through People’s Palace Projects in Rio de Janeiro and Com- Executive Director: munity Works in San Francisco. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Theatre Studies and Steven Butler Anthropology from Yale University. Program Assistant/ Andrew J. Tabler • SYRIA/LEBANON • February 2005-2007 Publications Manager: Ellen Kozak Andrew’s ICWA fellowship bases him in Beirut and Damascus, where he reports on Lebanese and Syrian affairs. He has lived, studied, and worked in the since ©2007 Institute of Current World a Rotary Foundation Ambassadorial Fellowship enabled him to begin Arabic-language Affairs, The Crane-Rogers Foun- studies and work toward a master’s degree at the American University in Cairo in 1994. dation. He was an editor with the Middle East Times and Cairo Times before moving to Turkey, Lebanon, and Syria, where he worked as a senior editor with the Oxford Business Group The Information contained in this and a correspondent for the Economist Intelligence Unit. In 2004, Andrew co-founded publication may not be reprinted Syria Today – Syria’s first independent English language magazine. He has contributed or republished without the express op-ed pieces on Syria over the last year to the New York Times and the International Herald written consent of the Institute of Tribune. Current World Affairs.